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It Makes You Walk Through Hell

I’m back with a new reflection and today I’m gonna talk about one of the main subject on most of the songs worldwide and I don’t think I could give a bigger hit on what it is… Of course, I’m talking about L-O-V-E.

Before you start reading, press play on the playlist I created for you to enjoy while reading:

We grow listening to songs talking about how love is beautiful, magical, all sunshine and rainbows and we honestly believe – specially girls! – that we’re gonna find our Prince Charming and live happily ever after… Right?

Not in real life, I’m afraid.

I don’t want to discourage you to fall in love because it is beautiful and all of the above but that is just the first contact with love… After all, life is not all sunshine and rainbows, so why should love suddenly make it differently? And, there are several couples all around the world that will disagree with me and that is alright; we all experiment life in a different way and I respect the fact that you probably have it different than I do and so many other do as well.

Because we believe love is magical, we grow not prepare to the fact that it might hurt, make you cry, cause you pain and many times, make you not want to fall in love again. But, I believe that love only grows thru hurt, tears and pain… In life, if we don’t have problems we don’t grow, right? Same with love!

Note the wedding vows, they may variate but they all contain the same words:

“…for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part…”

Look at those words and tell me it is all about sunshine and rainbows! People forget that the essence of love is quite the opposite of the one sung for centuries; the essence of love is sacrifice, because that is when you know for sure if you love or not.

Being in love when everything is going well and the future looks bright and promising is easy; the hard part, the one that puts love to the test is when things go south and unexpectedly, you realize that love isn’t perfect. It is when suddenly you have to decide either if it is worth or not to go thru suffering for that one person that, until a day, a week or a year ago, was a completely and total strange to you.

I know many of you reading this are thinking: why are you breaking our dreams of perfect love? I am not… I am telling you that love is the most powerful thing you could ever feel; take for instance the love of a mother: I’d willingly give my everything away for my daughter’s happiness. Always. But I have to be realistic and acknowledge the fact that she might make me cry someday, she might hurt me with decisions that I don’t agree with and she might do things that will make me sad but none of those things will EVER change the love I have for her and that is the essence of love.

The Bible gives us many examples of love and there is a quite famous passage that declares that love suffers all; if you are not willing to suffer for love, maybe you don’t love the person you’re with.

“1 Corinthians 13

1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (extracted from the N.I.V. Bible)

And, to me, the greatest example of all times is Jesus Christ – He, literally, walked thru hell because of the love He feels for us (yes, I am a believer); now, if I have to imagine dying to save a bunch of people who couldn’t care less about me, what would I do? I honestly don’t think I would go for it but love makes us do the most insane things – and I encourage people to disagree when I say that dying for people who don’t even love you back isn’t insane.

And love always comes back to you somehow. It may not be thru the person you’ve shown love towards but it will always find a way to find you, so, no matter how you feel right now, no matter if you don’t believe you deserve love or if you don’t believe it will happen to you, it will find you and you’ll feel love and that will make you realize that everything that you’ve been thru so far, was preparing you for a much bigger plan – and maybe a much bigger battle, sorry! – but you’ll be stronger and have endurance to go thru hell for someone who’s worth walking there for.